theChurch.digital's 2nd Annual 12 Hour Giving Tuesday Livestream

All right. Hey everybody. Welcome to the second annual 12 hour Giving Tuesday live stream put out by the Church Digital. Jeff here. Man, it has been it's been a month or so since I've been on stream. Been a little busy. Uh just got out of the hospital. I'm sure we're going to talk about that at some point. Uh but as much as I would love to celebrate everything uh that's happened and what God's doing in my life, we're really here to celebrate uh what God is doing, what the gospel is doing in digital and virtual space. And so thank you. Welcome everybody here uh to the live stream. Uh looks like we've got I'm going to see if my buttons work here. Looks like we've got Andy Mage coming in. Chino uh first. Yes, he is first. Music is a little hot. I hear that. And I am going to turn that down.

Thank you. Okay, I appreciate that. I'm I'm getting some Andy's our producer and getting some criticism. Uh, which I'm all about. Yes, the music was a little hot and getting getting it down as well.

Okay, that's got to go away. That button is wrong, Andy. I meant to like code it so that it would hide and not hide. And anyway, it's just it's two separate buttons. Screwed that up. Nigel. No, my friend. My friend is coming in uh first as well.

Hi. Hi, Jeff. Uh I'm glad she didn't call me Jeffy. Uh because that's uh what she does call me. She calls me Jeffy. Uh I've known Nigel for twenty some years. We were college together. We Amy was uh actually no, you didn't know my wife in high school, but uh good good friends all around.

Excited uh for Nigel and others to be on the live stream. Hey, listen. Uh it has been a uh rough uh been a rough run. Uh but I'm glad to be back in the seat here. Um I just want to put some disclaimers up front here. Um I will be drinking out of a coffee cup. It is water. It is not coffee. Uh the doctors would not be happy if I drank coffee. And so uh I'm I'm not drinking coffee, but I just I like this better than a water bottle. So, and if you see me popping pills or all sorts of other things, uh yes, I'm I'm heavily medicated at this point in in my life, but we'll get more into that here in a little bit.

With uh with the Church Digital, our goal uh with this Giving Tuesday live stream and our end of the year campaign is to raise $50,000. Our our goal is to literally uh 2x our budget here in into the new calendar year uh while 10xing our our impact. If you see the Church Digital, we're at the verge of scaling. We've built a lot of systems for scale and, uh, we just need a little bit more, just a little bit more to to really see things explode, uh, in in a big way.

So, uh, now you may be saying like, you know, Jeff, you know, what's what's a little bit more? Like, I I want you to really appreciate, and I'll say this throughout the day, uh, our our our annual budget in the last fiscal year was $75,000. Like um everything that we're doing, everything we're going to talk about globally, every all the trainings, the equippings and multicontinents, the the equipping and empowering people to be digital missionaries globally. Um yeah, about $75,000, maybe 76, 75 and change. And uh so like one of the things that I just I love about the Church Digital. And one of the things that hopefully you'll hear throughout this story, this um uh this stream is is that um we've managed to figure out a new model of of ministry. All all everybody you see here is on on the stream uh is either a volunteer or a volunteer or a fractional leader. You're going to hear me cough a lot more today, I'm sure.

A volunteer or a fractional leader. And what what that means is um well, I don't pay them what they're worth. The Church Digital does not pay them what they're worth. As a matter of fact, like I I don't have a full-time salary. I I'll I'll disclose right up here at the top. I make $1,000 a month off the Church Digital. $250 a week. And um and and you know, you you can ask the the people that run the books. Uh if months are are tight, I'm the first to cut my paycheck. Um which is often with the Church Digital. And so, uh, my my point is is that we've managed to figure out a new model of of ministry and we're experimenting towards moving forward with that. One that's not a full-time uh salary and one that's not um beholden to mortgages because, you know, we're completely digital global organization. Uh instead, we've figured out this model that lets us be far more agile, experimental, uh and leaning on on volunteers and in fractional leaders.

So, everyone you see with the Church Digital does not get a paycheck. Nobody, I'm sorry, nobody gets a paycheck. I'll say it that way. Um towards that, but I'm excited to hear their stories. I'm excited for you to hear and start to understand what God's doing in digital virtual space uh through uh these men and women. Last I counted, I think there's like nine or ten countries. Uh probably one, two, three, I I would say four continents probably involved in this. You know, our leadership has never been in the same room at the same time. Um uh our senior leadership has, not even talking about the the volunteers. As a matter of fact, majority of the people on the stream I've never met um in real life, but even as as we're able to jump in in Google Meets and and Zoom calls and and and interact with each other on WhatsApp or Discord, you know, you start to see that relationships develop uh through this. So, hey, let me put this disclaimer out there. We are we're doing a um uh we are this is a a fundraising event and so for the next 12 hours you're going to hear me cough and uh actually I'm looking forward to having other people talk more than me today but um u this is a fundraising event uh and so if you'd like to give we've already had a donation from Nigel no thank you Nigel um you can go to uh the Church Digital /g the Church Digital g uh and there's a you can watch the live stream on that page, the schedules on this page. Uh a list of our projects, some of the things that we're raising for are on that page. Uh as well as our um uh donor form exists on that page. Uh you know, I'll I'll listen, you want to give me blockchain or crypto, you want to give me crypto, I'll take crypto. It's on the page, but you know, nobody gives crypto. But please check out the Church Digital /g uh for more information on that. And just another housekeeping thing, it's kind of cool. I I I like this up front. Um we were given a $5,000 uh matching donation to open this up. So, uh and and I'll be saying this uh until we we make we make it. Um you know, our goal is $50,000, which is awesome. Uh and I'm excited about that. We've got $5,000 to open up. Uh, and if we, the Church Digital, can collect $5,000 today, uh, this individual, uh, will match that and give us 5,000 back. It's kind of a jerk move. No, I'm kidding. It's not a jerk move, but it really was was nice of this individual to set up a $5,000 donation, but we got to work for it. And so, we do have to raise $5,000 uh off the bat. We've actually got a couple matching donations, a 5,000 and a 2,000 I think that we've got to go through. And so hopefully maybe in some others we're talking about doing it as well. But I listen um here's here's what I know of the years uh that I've spent with the Church Digital. The Church Digital we've been around since 2016, a nine-year organization. Uh and and over those nine years, we've had nine different nine different looks, nine different approaches, nine different uh you know, we were working with physical churches. We were doing hybrid a lot during COVID and um you know, we were fidget a lot of you have heard me say those words in and so many different approaches towards digital ministry. I have never been more excited. I've never been more excited than what we're doing now, empowering digital missionaries globally. Like for the first time, I really feel like this is the sweet spot. Like we we have found our rhythm. We found our our place. Uh we found people that are are interested in in moving forward. You know, it's interesting. I've had maybe I don't gosh, I always hate to put a number on this. I used to track the numbers. Uh we had maybe I stopped counting around 700. I had over 700 conversations easily with people that that tell me this. I feel like God's calling me to do something. I talk to my pastor about it. He says it, you know, the gospel doesn't work that way. I talk with my denomination about it. They don't want to experiment or they don't have the time or resources to I talk with my spouse and friends and they're uh not they don't know how to support me because they don't even know if it's a good idea or bad idea. So, is the idea of digital evangelism? Is that good or bad? Literally 700 conversations at least. You know that that was like a couple years ago when I stopped. God is moving. We're seeing God move and we're seeing people start to recognize the opportunities to to move and to utilize his power in in digital and virtual space.

A and so what we the Church Digital have done is we've become that that ecosystem. We've become that that network. I mean I I I don't want to say denomination but almost because there is no denominational support because there is very little pastoral support. We have become that uh for these uh for the people for our digital missionaries. Literally setting up equipping uh training centers, equipping cohorts uh to equip people to be digital missionaries and and mobilize them, send them out, get them connected to ongoing um uh community through peer-to-peer uh decentralized networks. There's so much stuff that that we're we're doing here. So excited to see what what's happening. Um, and I I'm really excited that I and a couple others have come on and uh and and co-host this with me. Uh, but I get to spend the next 12 hours with you talking about what God is doing in digital and in virtual space. So, um, let's do uh let's do this.

Um, I'm trying to look at my time here. I got a couple. I got I got Cindy Lamb. Uh Cindy Lamb is from Hong Kong. She's one of our she's a she's a digital missionary. She's doing some really interesting artwork uh in in Hong Kong. And Cindy also hangs out with me um like a lot of mornings. Well, mornings for me, you know, because time zones are a thing. You know, if if I could wave a magic wand, if if God gave me one wish, I I'd be like, I don't know how this would work, but time zones are horrible. And so, if time zones could go away and we'd all could be on one clock, that that's great. But uh we'll get with Cindy here in in a little bit.

Some of the you know some of the negativity uh around what we're doing uh is centered around that it's not in the building and and there's a a biasness towards uh digital missionary work uh or at least that it's it's challenging or taking away from what's in the building. And you'll hear me say this a lot over the course of the day. Um we do something different digitally to reach someone different digitally. The people that we're reaching in digital and virtual spaces, um well, they're not the people that go to church buildings. You know, I'm talking about a uh a Satanist neopagan who found Christ in virtual reality. Uh I'm talking about a uh a dechurched individual who came back to Jesus and came back to the church uh through a Facebook group. Uh I'm I'm talking about uh an individual millennials at the lowest point of his life uh who found Christ uh through a Twitch and a Discord church, a gamer church. Uh look listen you, it's not that we're challenging. It's not that we're going against the building. We're not conflicting with the building, we're complimenting the building. You know, it's interesting. I've I've I've heard it said that we need the we need the buildings. We do. We need the buildings. I I work with buildings all the time.

I I we need the church buildings to exist, but at the same time, uh we also need to thank you, uh Jason Morris. Uh but in addition, we also need um the micro church.

We need the workplace ministries. We need the digital churches. We need all sorts of options that are out there. Jason, let me know if my mic is good.

Hopefully that mixes a little better now. And uh yeah, so that is that's what we're doing. We are trying to help people um become digital missionaries to take the gospel into digital or virtual space and at the same time uh plant uh churches in these spaces in in in in my opinion uh you need all of these different models to complete the great commission if we're ever going to. And and so for us to reach people, let's use digital as a way.

Not that everyone, not that everyone will be reached digitally. I know that's not true. Uh but enough people are going to be reached digitally to make it worthwhile.

And that's the heart behind what we're doing uh with the church digital. So, okay, I think I got my mix. I noticed, yeah, my settings were a little off here.

Uh, I I do appreciate it. If uh you know, let me just hit the here. Um uh Melanie is saying uh yeah, hand pink waving.

I I always love those. Uh yeah, Bible with the battles. We're going to be hearing from Demarcus here in a little bit. Let's go.

Giving Tuesday with TCD. Excited about that. Uh we got a couple people nicely telling me my music is too loud. Uh but yes, I I am uh I should be good to go at this point.

And the producer, Andy Mage, the person who I listen to on all creative things, says, "Yeah, I sound good now." So, I'm happy. I want to figure out how to get my uh I I need an icon on on my uh on my face on my uh YouTube like profile.

I don't I don't have an icon. Looking at that, I realized I don't. Andy, you don't use the A very often. I don't I don't see that very often from you.

So, that's that's interesting that it even popped up. Listen. Hey, let's let's go ahead and get started. Um, I'm going to uh to bring on on Cindy uh Lamb and uh let's uh get started in in the conversation.

So, hey Cindy, how's it going?

Good, good, good.

All right.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I do. You you you you look good on camera. You sound good. Uh what what time is it in Hong Kong? What is it? Uh 9:15.

Yeah, in the evening.

Yeah. How how was your Tuesday?

How was my Tuesday? It was really good. I played two hours of tennis. Yeah. Today.

That's a that's a tough life, Cindy. Two hours two hours of tennis. Very very cool. Um, hey, so tell tell us a little bit like what you do. By the way, I've I've got your your graphic files.

I can pull that up when it's time. But tell us a little bit about uh the the church digital uh kind of like what your take of it is from from somebody literally on the other side of the planet.

Um can you repeat your question?

I don't quite get what you.

What's your what's your opinion? What's your view? Uh how how are you connected with the church digital?

Yeah, it's like I um attended a conference in April and then um that was very good and I just started you know doing equipping uh digital missionary course the EDM course.

I did it twice. Once in the summer and I just finished it one uh uh in November and I just found it really good.

Yeah.

Okay. So, equipping digital missionaries, that's the cohort that we use uh to train digital missionaries globally. Now, Cindy, what exactly? Let's talk about your specific um ministry.

Um what do what do you do digitally? What does it look like for you? What do I do digitally? Well, first of all, I'm an artist.

So, I first start out with art exhibition, you know, the traditional way and then have like a physical exhibition inviting people to um look at my paintings.

Um that's always got like a um like a Christian message and it's always got um a message that to encourage people and then I um extended it into animation media.

I capture my uh paintings and my animation video and that I have a YouTube channel. So that was like having um a lot of content online and also use next step journey to have like um just sort of some interaction with people so people can click on the journey each step and just

try to um you know like connect with people online.

Very cool. So let me show some of this. Um I know she's got um hopefully I'm going to press the right button here.

Yeah, there you go. Uh, and so this is some of her animation artwork that you can see here. Uh, that some of the stuff that that you program.

Now, you talk about um like uh connecting with people. I know you use a platform called Next Steps uh that's created by our friends over at Jesus Film.

Um h have how does that how does that work where you're able to people see the artwork and then kind of what happens next?

How do you build relationships uh with people uh digitally? Basically um so far I haven't built any relationship with strangers like basically I have a next step journey and I will um send it to a friend and then I will ask them to look at my video like my animation video and then

um I would say oh I if you're interested in Christianity click on this uh tab and then uh that will point them to a website or if they want to find out more about Christianity or for someone to pray for them they can also click on the step, you know, the tap on

next step. So, it's just a one way further from just consuming content, you know, like the YouTube channel thing.

Yeah.

What what stories, what success, what have you what have you seen coming out of this as you're talking to friends, people you know, and maybe challenging them to to go deeper.

What What does that look like for you? Um well so far you know it's all been well received because I used to work in finance and investment bank.

So I invite people to my um exhibitions and I send them my animation videos like all the time and that's well received. I mean because like I'm more comfortable using arts and exhibition animation videos to do my evangelism rather than asking people to go into church.

So, so far I think I've um sown a lot of seeds and uh nobody have um received Christ. Oh, actually no, that's one person that uh accepted Christ in my art show.

That was like a physical art show. Uh but I've been sowing a lot of seeds in the corporate world.

Yeah.

Very cool. Um and and one you said one person accepted Christ and and some of the things we'll talk about, you know, with the church digital, we we don't look at a gospel conversation. I don't want to get into the weeds, but you know, even helping somebody grow closer to Christ, whether they're an atheist becoming an agnostic or a consumer Christian moving closer to a deeper understanding of discipleship, like it's that's all in in the same direction.

And so with the the church digital, we've got a much broader scope of of what ministry looks like. And and honestly, it's it's really rewarding to help people take those those next steps along the way.

Well, Cindy, I know um one of the things I I I love about you is, you know, we when we do our open offices, for me, it's usually 7:30 in the morning.

For you, it's probably 8 or 9 at night uh when when you come on. Um Cindy, I I do a couple open offices a week where I'll jump into a Google Meet room uh and just, you know, say in our communities, I'm here.

Come hang out and talk. And and it's always fun because we'll get people from all over the planet coming in and and hanging out here in America.

Cindy from Hong Kong, uh India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe. It's it's really a a cultural mixed bag of of sorts. uh where people just come in and and talk and share what they're doing and and um and and learning and going through in life and and so uh you know Cindy in

in like do you have any uh positive thoughts or any any experiences uh on those on the open offices?

Um yeah that was really good. I mean I really appreciate that. I just felt that even though we are all connecting online, I feel that there's a lot of like care, you know, like people will honest each other, you know, how you doing?

How can I pray for your ministry? So, I think that um that's really good.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, uh Cindy, and if what is your what is your YouTube channel?

Um how can people find you or get more information uh about you?

It's called Art Animation Therapy. It's not animations. It's art. A art t and then animation therapy.

Okay, I'm gonna pull it up real quick. I meant to do I should have did this in advance. I'm sorry. YouTube.com/art. Say it again.

Art and then n i m a t i o n therapy.

Yeah, I totally should have got that from you in advance. I You know what? I I had it I got it booked marked somewhere. Um,

doesn't matter.

That's okay. Hey, if they want to get more information on you overall, Cindy, how can they do that?

Um, they can find me on Instagram, it's like Cindy KSLM. C I N D Y K S Lamb.

Or you can find me on Facebook, just Cindy Lamb. And it's just me with my dog, my cocker spaniel.

Awesome. And when you look at the icon, you will you will find

You have a cocker you have a cocker spaniel.

I I had a cocker.

I used to have one.

Okay. Used to.

I love cocker spaniel.

Yeah, they're they were they were good dogs.

Well, Cindy, uh thanks for thanks for hanging out with us today. Uh and thank you for the work that you're doing uh globally. How did you first connect with us?

You talked about the conferences, but actually I I don't I don't know that. How did you hear about the church digital? Um even it's like because I'm connected with someone from create international because I used to do a course called um you know like um um children's book course for create international and

I was in the Scott server and they said oh there's a conference in April by the church digital. So I just you know said hey you know I just have a look the conference and then I started going to the open office and then I started doing the um equipping digital missionary course.

So, you didn't do anything with us until the conference in April.

Wow.

No,

you you you you dove in.

I'm I'm just in in my mind thinking I thought you were you were longer than that. I didn't I didn't realize the conference was the first thing. The conferences she's talking about are our uh digital missionary conferences. Uh the conference in April had uh 1,500 people register from 85 90 countries something like that globally.

Uh we had, 00 people show up day of. It was a it was a it was a lot of fun. Uh we we do uh two conferences a year and so uh it's a great way to meet new people like for example uh Cindy.

Um, and then as well uh it's a great opportunity to um uh to to move uh just to build more relationships, get people connected into into the ecosystem as as well.

And there's so many organizations that are we'll talk about that later, but so many organizations are excited about what we're doing. Anyway, Cindy, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Um, feel free to hang out with with the live stream and and appreciate everything you're doing uh in Hong Kong for the kingdom.

Thank you.

All right, y'all have a good You have a good day, Cindy. And then there was me. All right. Hey, listen. So, some interesting things came up in the Cindy conversation.

Number one, Cindy was talking uh about the the conferences overall. This is an interesting fact. I don't say this a lot. through the church digital for us to do a digital missionary conference that one conference that Cindy talked about cost about $20,000.

Yeah, that's it's it's it's a lot. You know, once you look at the tech, the marketing, everything that goes into it. By the way, the conferences are free.

Um we we do the conferences like the uh the digital missionary conference for free. And so we offer that available to train uh someone like Cindy to be a digital missionary.

That EDM course that she had talked about cost about $145 uh for the cohort. It's a five six week cohort. Six week cohort I think now and so it's about 145 bucks uh to do that.

And once again, we the church digital, we offer that for for free. Uh because you know, as you'll discover, a lot of our people are in um India, uh China, not China.

Well, actually some interesting work in the in the east, but I can't talk about that. Uh in in some other spaces. Uh but we need help uh to make that that happen.

Um, you know, like I said, it's it's a little bit of a a 2x. Just a little bit more can help us go a very very very far way long way as these systems start to scale out at the global level.

And so we're excited about that. Uh, and so, hey, for uh to give to the church digital, uh, please just go to the church.digital/give.

The church.digital/g. digital and uh you can fill out the donor form uh that's on there as well. Let's just hit up the the the chat room a little bit here.

Uh Andy says uh 2 hours of tennis sounds like a dream. Um my mom I think that's my mom. Yeah, I have I have no idea what Oh, 4926 is but my mom says Jeff.

That's always nice of her. Um, let's see what she says down here. Praying for all the participants today's program of Giving Tuesday. Love you.

My mom's awesome. My mom is awesome. She's a bit much sometimes. I love mom. Way to go, Cindy. Proud of Cindy. Uh, yeah, she did a great job.

Jason Morris JMO there. She was just telling you to go to your room. No lie detected, my friend. 48 years old. She still has that effect on me.

It's true. Uh, Sparky PR. Uh, yo, nice to see you. Long time. You guys are doing great. Um, who are you? Do I know you?

I don't recognize the I I don't recognize the name. Fill me in. Would love to know. I mean, yeah. Appreciate that though. Hey everyone coming in as well.

Why is that not clicking? There you go. Arno, Arno, my friend from South Africa. Arno Ptorius. Man, Arno, it has been a minute. I want to catch up with you here in in in a little bit.

I man I dude like I I just I yeah you I I could almost stop the stream right now just to have a conversation uh uh with Arno.

That that's really cool man. Thanks for jumping on that in here as well. Um we got Julie coming in. Hey everyone. Julie will be on uh in a in a little bit coming on from Mexico.

But Arno, man, it was it was great great to see you the bearded wonder down in South Africa. Uh, and so, hey, let's uh let's get back into the stream here uh a little bit.

Uh, 10x our vision, 10x our impact, 2x our budget. Help us, the church.digital/g. Uh, but let me bring on our our next individual here.

Uh, you know, it's funny. We just had my mom on here. Uh, now I'm going to bring on my long lost brother here, uh, Steve.

Hey, Steve. How you doing, Jeff? Doing good, my friend. So, this is this is Steve Reed. Uh, listen, I took you all the way to Hong Kong.

Uh, Steve is on uh West Coast, Florida. Not Naples, but near Naples, right? Naples. No, a little north of that. Little north. And so, uh, Steve Reed uh, no relation whatsoever, but uh, Steve also hangs out with me in a lot of the open offices.

And so, people always think we're related. Uh, I I guess it's the the the facial hair, but to to whatever end. How's it going, Steve?

Good. My brother from another mother, but the same godly father. That's Oh. Oh my gosh. Look at that. You You actually put some thought into that one.

Uh putting that together, man. So, uh so update me just real quick cuz I I don't feel like I've talked to you in in a in a couple weeks or so.

What's going on in life? Well, you've been busy chasing in some of the wrong circles lately, but uh yeah, every everything good's happening.

I thought I would just tell a quick story about how we met and Yeah, go for it. It Yeah, it was because I had felt called that I needed to go out and start doing my part in filling the great commission.

So, after talking to my wife, it became evident that we were not going to be moving to subsaharan Africa or anywhere like that to do our job.

I decided, okay, there's got to be a better way. I'll go searching online. Is there a way I can do this from the comfort of my home and do it online?

And I basically came down to two different choices uh that look like things I could do. And Jeff was one of them. He thought that uh I might not like the structure of the other one, but you know, please feel free to check it out, do whatever you want.

And within a matter of a few weeks, I quickly determined that uh he was correct. and and I like the structure of the church digital a lot better.

And I and I will say I've been through their EDM course. I now lead one of their courses and um one of their groups.

And I have got to say I am more convinced than ever. I was convinced when I did it, but I am more convinced than ever that this is a place for you to invest some time and some money if you can't do it elsewhere.

and that is spreading the word digitally. Just think about it. There's a lot of people who are unchurched, dechurched, never even heard of it.

They're never going to find a physical church again in some cases or period in others where they might find uh the joy and wonder of knowing Jesus.

But online, you stand a chance to reach a bunch of those people. I don't remember the exact numbers now off the top of my head, but it is crazy insane the number of people that have online access and the number of pe hours that are spent every day online.

So now you can reach them. And the church digital is is getting down and dirty and learning how to do it everywhere. Uh I'm not big into gaming, but they've got a group of people who do it in the gaming atmosphere where a lot of people are locked in and spending a lot of time. Uh, personally I do some YouTube and Facebook stuff, but it doesn't matter where you're at. Their course and their leaders will help you figure out a way to do it.

And and that's how I found Jeff and the Church Digital. And uh, I strongly encourage you to join in, sign up. Like Jeff says, he doesn't charge a fortune.

He he doesn't even charge anything. So join in. There you go, Jeff. That's my story. You know, it was it was funny. We actually the church digital, we pretty much own the Google term digital missionary.

Um the one of the one of the other probably there's probably three people that are in the top levels. Um one is our one is our board member um Jesse Carbo who'll be on later with digital missions project.

He just uses the term a lot in his marketing. And so the two of us pretty much lock up, you know, the majority of the top, you know, Google trends on that.

The other uh digital missionary course, there's another digital missionary organization. It's actually a corporation, and the guy charges about $5,000 uh to go through his course.

He's a friend. I I love him, but that's just way too much money. And so we we want to see these ideas scale. We want to see these ideas go global.

and putting a $5,000 course on a $5,000 price tag on, you know, the ability to to see the gospel move globally. Um, you know, that's going to be a great limiter.

And, uh, we want to be able to empower even people like Steve uh to do what they're doing u globally. You know, I it's it's funny, you know, Steve as as a as a boomer.

Can I if I can say can I say boomer? Can I say boomer? No, I can say boomer. Yeah. It's nicer than some of the things you've called me.

That's true. Um, you know, Steve Steve as a boomer is is going to be is going to do things differently digitally um than than I will and and bring in a Gen Z or a Gen A, bring my kids in and they're going to do something completely different as as well.

And so all our trainings are meant to be contextualized and adapted. Um, and and that that's part of the power of it. you know, later on we're gonna we're going to meet people that are that are doing the EDM material equipping digital missionaries, our cohorts in Europe.

We're going to meet people in Africa. We're going to meet people um in in that are that are starting it in India. We're going to meet people that are doing it in Pakistan and uh some of some of that area.

Like there's um we're seeing this spread out and get contextualized into these unique spaces. And it's and to be honest, it's it's a lot of fun uh to see it and and to be a part of that.

Uh you know, I know Steve, we were talking about uh with with EDM to do a full cohort. Uh it's about $1,500 uh for for a cohort to to exist.

And that's platform costs, that's training costs. Um man, I even want to get to the place where where we we can pay our leaders off off some of what what's coming in and doing that.

uh leaders like Steve that that teach the courses now um like it's they they they teach it for free and and and so uh which is awesome.

I appreciate Steve's heart and the heart of the other outpost leaders. But uh the desire is is cuz as Steve and and a lot of our other missionaries are trying to to fund raise, everybody's bivocational.

um to be able to use the church digital to help them fund for the for the mission work that they're doing is a strong desire.

And so, man, Steve, I can remember the first time I met you and uh and you you know were asking some really good questions for for a boomer uh for an old guy and uh leaning into it.

There it is, the old guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Man, it was it was so good. Uh and and just to see how you dove in to everything with the church digital.

Um you know, you're Steve's also is u one of these guys that we'll jump into these open offices, especially the early ones for me.

Um almost just, you know, sometimes Steve, I don't think you really have anything to talk about as much as you just want to hang out and and make sure like there's critical mass and energy in the room.

And um it's it's it's a lot of fun to to to kind of hang out with you. When I want Well, and I want to make sure once you struggle to get up that early in the morning for you, there's somebody to talk to in case nobody shows up.

Yeah. You know, I I will say that um you know, my my my life uh pre this weekend, you know, a lot more coffee was helping to get me going in the morning.

Now it's it's not coffee, it's water. I'm disclaiming. It's water in the coffee cup. And uh yeah, so it's going to be interesting those those 7 7:30 a.m.

meetings where I've got to like, you know, be friendly. My uh that even even this 8:00 start time this morning for the live stream, 8 o'clock Eastern was was hard for me, man.

I I don't my my mornings. I mean, I I listen, I'll work till 3 in the morning. I don't care. But, you know, get me up at 8:00, you know, where I got to like talk to somebody.

You know, we've we've got people in the west. We've got people in California. We'll do a meeting at at like 8 or 9.

That's like 5 or 6 in the morning there time. I I don't I always I I always feel like I have to apologize. I'm like, I'm sorry, y'all.

And I don't know how they do it, but somehow they do it. So, hey, Steve, tell me what as as you're in those open offices talking with people globally.

Um, yeah. just what's your what's your take you know globally culturally like what's been your impression of some of those open offices that we have you know it's amazing I was talking to my wife the other day about this because of the open offices and because of the classes uh that I

have done I have got to meet more people globally than I ever have in my life because my wife jokes a lot that that I don't even like to leave the peninsula and she's not talking about Florida.

We have a little sub peninsula. I don't even like leaving alone traveling globally. So, I've really had limited exposure to that until the church digital.

And uh I can tell you it has not only blown my mind uh the different aspects where people are coming from that find you, but it's quite apparent that you're also blowing their minds and and you have opened up a door for them to express and know more about the word and spreading it than they otherwise would have had a chance to do. It's really opened up the world for a lot of people. Yeah, it's my hope is it's it's funny as as a guy who's facing a a bypass surgery.

Evidently, uh according to the doctors, I have 100% blockage in my um widowmaker artery in my heart and a 70% blockage in the one of the adorning chambers, one of like the adjacent branches of of the heart.

Um, which by the way was a complete accident to find that. I kind of like accidentally fell into that ex like it's crazy story I'm about to tell you later.

But you know, legacy and what I'm leaving behind really is sticking with me right now. And um, you know what? If if what I leave behind is a bunch of people who are excited about sharing Jesus globally, who are using digital to uh escape persecution in India, uh who are figuring out how to be the church in China um digitally so they can stay underground. Like there's, you know, if that's what I leave behind, so be it.

Uh, and so it's been a uh just an incredible um incredible journey. You know, I don't I don't you know, it's funny like when when I got the bad news about the the needing to bypass, I just I remember actually I texted a friend of mine, one of the guys I go to who's actually in South Africa, um Nigeria actually, sorry. I text a friend of mine who's in Nigeria and and and I told him I was like, "Yeah, I'm um I just lost control of this whole thing and and and he he texted back, Facebook messaged back.

He said he said, "Jeff, you never had control. That's the problem." He said, "It was just like that." Amen. If you thought you had control, you were you were kidding yourself. You never had control of yourself. And uh and and that's just it, man. I um I I hope that we don't have control and that God does something beyond what we expect.

And and that's that's really the heart behind, you know, 10x uh the impact. Okay, God, we we we have Piddley and with the Pidley, we've managed to build something decent. Um God, do something in this moment with this decent that only you can do. we're presenting you with five loaves and two fish like go to town and uh and and that's our hope is that God would would do something um in us but honestly through you uh many many of you like Steve Steve's a Steve's a donor Steve supports the the the church digital financially and and I'm going to ask a lot of you to do the same thing to to to financially support the the church digital whether it's a a one-time gift or or monthly gift.

And you can do these donations at um at the the church.digital/g thechurch.digital/g. Our goal is to raise $50,000 over the course of today uh and then over into the the end of the year.

We do have a $5,000 matching donation right now on the table. So, for every dollar you give right now, uh we'll have a matching dollar to go with it.

So, please jump on that. Uh the church.digital/g. Steve, as we're wrapping up with you, my friend, and any anything else? Yes, I'm glad because I was going to ask for a chance for something to close on because I I wasn't sure if you'd brought up your current situation.

So, I just want to take this moment to say you're looking at a guy here who his dedication and his heart towards this church digital has been what has made it what it is today.

He just left several days in the hospital finding out the news he just shared with you and looking for a surgery coming up in the next day or two if I'm right.

But in spite of all that, here he is dedicated to do a 12 hour. So, here's to you. Jeff is do you know if it wasn't for you this church digital would not have existed in the first place and I don't want to hear any more talk about a legacy cuz you're going to be around for a long time. Ah well well played. The surgery is actually going to be I I haven't scheduled the surgery yet but I think the surgery will be in January.

Um they I I also have the flu right? So, I have the flu and I have I have a heart issue and uh and so the the flu is um the doctor wants that the surgeon wants that out of my system before they cut me over.

They're they're worried about um pneumonia or whatever. So, yeah. So, anyway, uh it'll be an interesting Christmas uh and in in the end of the year, but uh I do think by the end of the year we'll we'll get something we'll have by early next year.

I think uh I somehow in the midst of this 12 hour stream I have to call to schedule that appointment. So we'll have to figure out when that's going to happen.

But uh at some point but Steve, thank you so much. I hope you got somebody covering you so you take a break at some point today.

But yeah, always a blessing to see you, Jeff. Uh Leighton's going to step on for a couple hours. Um and and to be honest, some of these outpost leaders I'm going to be like, "Yeah, just you you just, you know, do your own thing. You talk." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can understand why you wouldn't want to try. Simon doesn't need me to talk for him. Simon can Simon can interview himself.

It's It's fine. Anyway, Steve, thank you very much, sir. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and let you go. Uh, so 10x the Oh, I keep doing that.

I keep pushing the wrong button. Um, 10x uh the vision, 2x the budget. Um, help us get the gospel uh in into digital and and virtual spaces globally.

You know, one of the areas that we're we're really wanting to um to expand into is in India. Later on today we're gonna have uh people from India from uh northern India uh who's reaching the Hindi people as well as eastern eastern truly this way eastern India which is uh reaching the Bengali people and and so our our hope is is to start to launch outpost regional networks in those in those India spaces. we've already got leaders in mind that we're wanting to work with.

Um, and what's it's what's interesting for us is is we've got the opportunity to translate um some of our resources, the the book that I wrote with Dr. John Harris called Sharing Jesus online as well as our courses equipping digital missionaries into uh Hindi in Bengali uh to to reach the people in those spaces.

by the way huge amounts of persecution. Um you can be a Christian in um in these regions of of India. Um but you cannot um you cannot share Jesus. Uh proilitizing is is what's uh illegal uh in in these areas. And so um the Indian people uh are are wanting to move their evangelism efforts digital so best as to escape persecution.

Some really interesting things happening uh in in in the global space digitally and we the church digital are primed to equip and mobilize people to be digital missionaries in that space and we need we we we need your help to to do that.

Listen, we can barely pay the bills as is. And so the idea of of getting our $4,000 to uh to set up our materials to work better so that we can empower hundreds if not thousands of of Indian people to be missionaries in that space.

This is the part you play. Uh look at some of these projects on the church.digital/g. The church.digital/g. There's a list of projects on on that.

Um there's a table that's got everything that we're looking at. Uh $138 is the cost to stream um our material. Let me get that one to go away.

I think I hit the wrong button there. Yeah, $138 is the cost to stream a minute of of what we're doing uh of of our our material online.

It's um Oh, man. Now I'm hitting all the wrong buttons. Uh it's let me do this. It is three cents to send an email uh to equip, empower and encourage a digital missionary.

Like it's sad in this world everything does cost money. Uh and with the church digital we have managed to figure out honestly how to do it as cheaply as possible.

leaning into free or near free resources and and um in and just in hopes, you know, like like I I I said earlier in in our leadership, Andy tells me all the time, God, here's the here's the bread and fish.

Do what you're going to do with it. And uh and watching what God does is is incredible. Absolutely incredible. I've I've I've I've actually we're going to go somewhere and I do want to bring on the next guest, Julie, here in a second, but we're going to going to um we're going to start to open up like every penny that we spend and and and show off organizationally where this money is going because for a for a ministry to operate at the scale that we're re that we're doing with as little money as it as we're spending, it's it's incredible.

Uh and so realize that that your gift to the church digital which in the US is a 501c3 registered nonprofit. Your gift uh is going to go a long long way.

What is it that the widows might you know the the little bit that the widow gives? Well, it's everything she's got. It's nothing but even still that goes a very long way.

Um and so that that's the story. That would be the approach of of the church uh digital towards that. Okay. Hey, let me bring on on Julie.

Oh, Julie just as I did that disappeared. Julie, you on? Huh? I'm not sure what just happened because I saw her in the green room and then when I Julie, you muted yourself and you turned off your camera.

So, try again if you don't mind if you can hear me. You should be able to hear me in the green room and then I will I'll bring you on when when you get there.

That was weird. Yeah, I've got a little window in the screen where I can see the green room of the people that are off screen.

And uh right when I was like I literally right when I I clicked the button to bring her over, she just disappeared off the screen.

Well, hopefully Julie uh comes back by. Um sorry about that. Okay. Yeah, Julie, just come on when you can. Um would would love to get you back here in the room.

Uh hey, we've got Kelly. Uh Kelly works with Amplify Social, one of the agencies. um that are our does a lot of our our marketing and and graphic support work and things.

I love what y'all are doing to spread some light in all places. Sending love from MN in is that Minneapolis or is that min Minneapolis is Minnesota?

Okay, Minnesota. Minneapolis is not a state, Jeff. Minneapolis is not a state. That was kind of embarrassing. I I I apologize, Julie, from that.

Uh all right, we got Claudine. Hey everyone watching uh from the Philippines as well. That's our uh Claudine's with the agency as well. Uh you know it's one of the things I I love about the church digital.

We are a uh a global we're a global organization and so for us you'll meet in in a minute here our project manager um who is in uh Africa uh Nigeria you'll meet people from Europe and and Africa.

We already had Arno on here as well. And and so there's lots of there's lots of global interaction which I love. I love that about the church digital that we've been able to to find people with an aligned mindset of doing something different to reach different people for for Christ.

You know, it's in a little bit we're a little bit like the um I tell people we're like the island of misfit toys. We just we we collect the the oddballs, the freaks.

Um um that's interesting. Hey, Julie. Julie, I'm going to hang up on you, okay? And then you reconnect because it's not that's not going to work for me.

Try again now. All right. Hopefully that will get you on. Uh it was it was not not that easy on my side, but if you can come back on, I think that'll work.

Um we're a little bit of the island of the Misfit Toys where uh you know, we just we've got some odd balls. We've got people who think differently.

We've got people with um you know, just a different mindset or vision. You know, be honest. I can, you know, tear a little bit of my heart open here, let you see the damage over over the years.

Um, but there there's a little bit of that even in my own story where it's, you know, I was I was told, you know, I I was called to be a digital pastor, 30 years ago. I mean, probably 30 plus years ago, 1992. I was like in seventh grade. And um, you know, I if I had a nickel for every time some pastor told me, Jeff, it doesn't work that way.

Yet I kept seeing fruit of how it was. Um you know even even to this day uh a lot of that and and I wanted the church digital to be the support system for the people who thought like me who wanted to see the gospel move in digital and virtual space.

So come on let's come together and uh and and and let's let's work on this together. What is God calling you to do and how can we the church digital help?

You know, I remember that was some of the challenge with um with with some of the missionaries. A lot of people would come on and and would be like, "Hey, how can I help the church digital?" And and we try to get them plugged in and and it wasn't and not that they weren't helpful, but it wasn't like it wasn't a good fit. Um, and uh, I just I I can remember saying into one one individual in particular, let's let's flip the script here.

Instead of instead of you trying to help us, let's let's start differently. How can we help you with what you're doing with what God's called you to do?

And, uh, and and this individual was like, um, oh, you know, I need, you know, marketing and blah, blah, blah, and just some some coaching.

And I was like, okay, let's start and let's build a relationship with that. uh and so let us help you towards that you know and and that's the goal is God at a personal level I can say this God for whatever reason God does not has not told me to plant a church

I I can say that I actually I have a a check in my name written by the p my pastor growing up for $100 and and in the memo he wrote your your first donation for your church your first tithe for your church you I got that I don't know 15 years ago.

Um unfortunately Tommy Watson is no longer alive and so the check is is worthless uh financially. But um you know a lot of people including myself thought I'd be planting a church by this point.

But it's funny whenever I ask God, "Hey, is it my time? God, what are you going to do? Do I need is this my is this my time to plant a church?

It's so funny. I always hear I hear two words. Um no. Very clearly no. Like he might as well slap me upside the head Three Stooges style no.

Um and it's help. And so cool. All right. I'm going to help. We're going to do whatever we can uh to help people um in in the digital and virtual space, which is the heart behind what we're doing with the church digital between the the the community support uh peer-to-peer support, cohorts, and coaching. We're going to get into some of the care and Christ-centered recovery stuff later as well. Like we're building a very um God is building a very impressive thing among us uh as as a resource to help people equip and mobilize digital missionaries globally through relational evangelism and relational discipleship.

And we'll hear more stories. I you know I was really I I do want Julie to come back. Um I'm keeping an eye for for for whatever reason I don't think she can uh get in.

Uh Julie's great. Uh one of the things that that you'll learn from her. She is uh she's French uh but she's been traveling the world uh Latin and South America uh as as as a missionary just uh evangelizing and sharing uh Jesus, you know, wherever the Holy Spirit leads.

Um and and and living that missional lifestyle in what she's doing. Um and so she was going to come on. We'll give her a couple more minutes.

Let me see who's coming up next after that. After that is purpose. Purpose is purpose promise. Antonio, I'm in the waiting room now. Okay, Julie says she's in the waiting room now.

Okay, Julie, I don't see you. I don't want to be like, "No, you're not, but I don't see you." Um, dang it. I hope I'm not having a problem with Ecamm.

Um, try again, Julie. I really don't want this to be a problem. Huh. Okay. Chino says, "Turn interview off and on." I will do that now.

All right, Julie, reset one more time for me. Um, no, no, no. Let's try it. Just try it one more time, Julie. Just try to call in.

Yeah. Thank you, Julie. This is bothering me. I got to fix that. There you go. I thought I fixed that in the middle of the night, but I guess I did not.

Cool. Hopefully Julie can get logged on here in a minute and we're good. Purpose is uh our project manager from uh South Africa, one of our project managers.

And so looking forward to having Purpose on here in a little bit. Yeah. So, this is the part of the show where I think I run out of stuff to say.

That's not good. I'm an hour I'm just an hour into this thing. I'm an hour in and I'm already speechless. Not a good sign for the rest of the day.

Tell you what, that hat's hot. Um, it was hard. It really was hard um having the uh having the heart stuff last week. I was not expecting it.

Um I I went into the hospital for a um for a cough and a fever. Uh Friday I had um Friday I had uh a fever.

Went to the this is the before Black Friday, a Friday before Thanksgiving, had a fever Saturday went to urgent care and uh essentially had a um was was not diagnosed that was not COVID.

It was not anything. Hey, purpose, I'll get with you in a second. Um that was basically, yeah, you've got some sort of viral thing.

We don't know what it is. And um Sunday I I was just coughing. Fever was gone, but just literally like coughing. Sunday I I coughed so hard I passed out.

Literally blacked out. And then enter Monday. Um you know, slight fever and you know, I blacked out the night before. I went to the I went to the emergency room and saw the same doctor I saw in urgent care on Saturday, which is funny.

Uh but then they gave me the some of the same tests and the same test came back. Oh yeah, Jeff. Uh you've got you've got flu and I and I was like, "Do people pass out from coughing because of flu?" And uh the doctor's like, "What do you mean pass out?" And and

I started going into more and more detail about what passing out meant. And they started running more and more tests um looking at the heart.

And that's when they discovered the the the blockage. Um, and they tried to they tried to I've I've got the scars. They tried to plant a stent and it didn't work.

They went in through the wrist. Um, and uh and so the the blockage was I think too far to the edge where they couldn't get to it.

And so yeah, cool. Uh Jeff, you're going to have to have bypass surgery, but you're so sick with flu still and things like that that we're going to have to slow it down and and uh you'll have to get it later.

Um it's funny. I really did. I think I said this earlier. I I I could not Oh, by the way, all this was when my wife and um my daughter were and my mom were all out of town in in Europe um on a on a vacation on on a trip.

My daughter actually wants to go to school in Europe. Uh and so what was what was left was um me and my son and my my father.

And you know, my dad was good enough to take care of CJ, but I was basically alone in the hospital for like five days.

My wife came back that like right before Thanksgiving uh to to swoop in and be like, you know, a relational touch point for me because I was starving at that point just alone.

But it was funny. Um, God, I think I can say this. I I freaked out when I found out about the bypass. I'm still like antsy about it.

I know it's okay. The surgeon that did my father's triple bypass is doing mine. Uh I, you know, and and and I I believe everything's going to be okay.

Um but I know that God's in control more than more than I am. And so I'm looking forward to what he has uh in store through that.

Okay. Hey, let's do this. Um, I'm going to bring Julie on. Um, first, let's see if I can do this. Hey, purpose. I'll come to you in about five minutes or so.

Um, but we had some tech issues. Uh, here for a second. All right, Julie. Is this working? Yes. Hey, I can't I can't hear you.

Click the mute button on your screen, Julie. Does your computer have a mute button? Your Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You uh Your computer is telling me guest has mute.

My computer is telling me that you have muted yourself. Tech issues, baby. Nope. Um, is anybody good at lip reading? Oh, Julie, Julie, Julie, Julie, Julie.

Um, yeah, I don't know what to do here. Um, here I We got Andy Mage chipping in from the outside. Uh, checking your window.

Is there a mute button like a Zoom call? Arno. Arno from South Africa. You should let me fix it. Arno, I probably would. No.

Oh, Julie, I hate to do this. I'm I'm going to have to pull you. I'm sorry. Yeah, internet is very bad. I'm I'm sorry, guys.

All right, Julie, I think you're going to come hang out with us some here in a in a little bit as we get in with uh with Simon, right?

Yeah, I think she's even frozen there. So, all right, y'all. Um, yeah, she's not on mute, but it's definitely is muting here in our system.

Okay. All right. So, I'm going to hang up on Julie. I'm sorry, Julie. Oh my gosh. And then I lost uh interview is having a bad time, Andy.

That's not good when I've got like I don't know 25 interviews over the course of today. But hopefully I can get Purpose back. Purpose disappeared on me as well.

I I'm really not looking forward to the 12-hour hour Jeff monologue stream. I I I I don't There were There was a day where I would be really excited about the 12-hour stream.

I about me monologuing for 12 hours. I got to tell you, today is not that day. Today is not that day. And and so uh I would love to get some tech working uh for this a little better.

Um looking forward to having a conversation hopefully with purpose here uh in in a little bit. Uh and then I've got my friend Jesse Carbo coming up at at 9:15.

I will say that if we were to look at the people with the most questionable internet, Julie and um and purpose back to back are those people.

And so um yeah, it's that's maybe not surprising or at least it's it's explainable. Um all right. Hey, here's got we got Mark. Uh, Mark, what's your favorite food, Jeff?

Um, evidently salad. Now, I have been out of the hospital uh for a week. No, I've the week that I was in the hospital plus the couple days, um, I've I've already lost over 15 pounds.

Just just diet change, man. Sushi is the right answer. And sushi's healthy. Sashimi without the rice usually or sashimi salad, you know, raw fish on the salad.

U I love me some edamame. I I love me some wasabi. That's good stuff. But yeah, it's um it's been fun. Let's see. Jesse's Jesse's on.

Jesse, I'll bring you on here in a minute. I'll let you get set. Um yeah, I think I think we're good. Um, you know, all the all the tech issues aside here for the first hour, uh, do swing by the church.digital give.

The church.digital. Our hope is to 10x uh, our our budget to really start to get the gospel um, into some uh, unique places and spaces.

Oh, we got Purpose that came in as as well. I want to introduce you to my friend Purpose. So, let's Jesse, I'm going to bring Purpose on first.

So, Purpose, hold on, man. Let's see if this works. Hey, Purpose. How's it going?

Good, man. Thanks for jumping on the stream today with us. You um this is a different background, I think, than I'm used to. Is it?

Or is this where you normally are?

Uh it's kind of different. Is like another part of my leadership.

Looks good, man. So, um yeah. So, tell us tell man, tell me a little bit about tell the audience just a little bit about you and your ministry.

Okay. Um so, okay. Yeah. So, my name is Purpose. I am in Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria. And I'm a pastor, minister of the gospel. and I still want a ministry called Zion, Zealous Influencers of the Nations.

And basically what we're centered around is teaching, discipleship, and missions. So basically what we're about is teaching and raising people that can function as lights in different strata of society.

That's basically what we do. So as a ministry, we're involved in things such as we have the school of arts, school of governance, and educational outfits and various other things.

So what we do basically is raise people, disciple people who function in different sectors of engagements, various spheres of influence and interaction, be it from politics, governments, doctors, lawyers, educationists and he froze.

It was a great conversation until he froze. I'll keep an eye on him and see when he comes back. It's unfortunately working with some of the, you know, some of the lower economical, underresourced countries, stuff like this happens internetwise.

And so sorry about that. Purpose, thanks for jumping on on the stream with us. Purpose does a great job with our project management and works a lot with Andy and our other leaders in helping us get organized and structured.

The Church Digital I was largely run and driven by me over the course of the years, you know, and it was my full-time job. I had other things that were making money here or there, but it just didn't work out where I could make a salary off it.

And so I was very happy to utilize, to bring on a project manager like Purpose to come in and start to structure and organize the Church Digital.

We've been using the terms decentralize away from Jeff to make the organization strong outside of Jeff. This is even before, you know, all the hard stuff for me at a personal level happened.

And so we were already kind of taking stress off me and spreading it out across the organization almost in anticipation of what was coming. And so hey, Purpose.

Um, so how did you find the Church Digital? How did you connect? And you did EDM, right? What were your thoughts of that?

Yeah, yeah. So to start with, I found Church Digital on Facebook. And it resonated with me basically about infiltrating the digital space basically with the gospel first. But what the Church Digital is centered around is basically raising digital missionaries as a digital mission sending agency to sending missionaries in the digital space.

So that resonated with me first to begin with, and going through the EDM course was more like an eye-opener making me understand how I could be more effective as a digital missionary.

So there, it's exposed me to a lot of wisdom, you know, content and knowledge that the Church Digital has made available to make you effective in digital ministry and digital missionary.

So that was it for me, and EDM was mind-blowing. EDM was mind-blowing. I recommended EDM to a couple of leaders who have disciples that they're raising in Nigeria here. I have recommended it to them. So I still recommend this every day at this point.

Very cool. And so, yeah, it's been fun. Actually, Steve, who was on earlier, taught you, right? Steve Reed taught your EDM.

Yeah.

Steve's Steve was on earlier. I think we were talking about you. But it's been fun working with Purpose and getting his, you know, even on senior leadership, getting his global perspective bringing his worldview into it.

You know, Purpose is really good at asking the awkward question, and so I always love people that are brave enough to ask the awkward question. Because, you know, I need that. I need the people to like, you know, be like, "Yo, Jeff, this isn't working," and that just makes us better.

It's not a threat. It's like, "Man, you care enough to get it out there," and so really excited about how this is going.

Hey, it's $145 to take somebody through the Equipping Digital Missionary cohort like Purpose described. And we offer it through the Church Digital free.

Somebody, just to be blunt, somebody like Purpose doesn't have $145 to put into this based on the economy. He's kind of laughing just even as I say that.

And so, you know, the fact is that we need donors and sponsors to help people like Purpose get through EDM and empower them to do ministry globally.

And so, man, Purpose, thanks for jumping on on the call here. If you're interested in giving, if anybody's interested in giving, the Church.digital/give.

We do have a $5,000 matching grant right now at the Church.digital/give. And so we'd love to have your help in helping us get that and complete that $5,000 grant.

Purpose, just we're behind on schedule already, ma'am, but any closing thoughts or anything from you today?

Oh, so basically my presence here is just to provide some kind of support in terms of what we do as the Church Digital because what we do is highly imperative, highly important, especially in digital space. Pushing the kingdom and the council of God in the digital space, equipping digital missionaries in the digital space.

You can't overemphasize its importance basically. So what we're doing as a ministry as TCD is something that everyone needs to know about and be a partner. Everyone needs to partner with that. Everyone needs to support that. That's not basically me to talk about my ministry. Basically how we can support TCD to actualize its vision. That's basically what my closing thoughts are.

No, well said. Thank you, Purpose. Purpose has just been part of the team for three months, two months, relatively new, and he's been a valuable asset for the organization.

So, Purpose, thanks for jumping on the stream here. But we got to move on. So Purpose is just one of the missionaries, one of the people we're supporting and working with in Africa.

I would also encourage, you know, he is a phenomenal resource and it's been eye-opening to me, you know, a white bald American. I'm going to call myself out here to look outside of our typical US worldview and start to recognize some of the opportunities to work with people and some of the influence, some of the knowledge and some of the insight, some of the cultural opportunities by engaging with people of a different worldview like people like Purpose and others that we've worked with in the global sphere.

Man, they make me a better person. And they've made this organization a better option as well.

All right. Hey, so let's move on to Church Digital. Help us get the gospel in digital and virtual spaces. Help us plant churches in digital and virtual spaces.

Let me bring on one of my board members today here. Purpose, thank you very much. But let me bring on, as he coughs right on cue, Jesse Carbo.

Hey, man, Jesse, how's it going?

Good. How are you doing?

Man, well, I'm alive. So that's a step in the right direction. I am sweating like crazy under these lights. Like, my shirt is soaking wet, you know, down on my stomach, off camera, thankfully. But I just thought I'd share that with you.

Um, thanks, man. You've been around the world. You've been around us a lot lately. Anyway, um, just maybe catch me up a little bit. What do you do? What's your, what have you been up to these past, this past month or so?

Yeah. Um, through the work that I do at Digital Missions Project, we have been partnering with different organizations that are hosting conferences for pastors and church leaders and missionaries.

And you know, speaking of missions, like I got to participate in what I think is the longest running and largest missions conference on the planet called the International Conference on Missions.

It took place in Atlanta since 1948. There was about 600 different missions organizations under one roof talking about how they can work together to, you know, get the gospel out to as many people as possible around the world.

So, so interesting. And what was even more fascinating, I know this isn't the question that you asked, but I just want to interject this.

Sure.

No digital missions. I was the only person there talking about digital missions on any level. And so, yeah, there's so much opportunity in the kingdom to help our brothers and sisters that are out there bringing the gospel in so many different ways, but to discover the power and the influence that digital can have in that effort, in that work.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's what I've been doing, conferences.

Jesse, I was telling them earlier about you where, you know, I pretty much own the term digital missionary and I think between the two of us we're probably eight of the top ten on Google.

You know, and so we, and it's, we're both in Miami. We both knew each other before either of us were doing the digital missionary stuff, which is funny.

But there is, it's not a trend where it's happening, but I think more and more organizations are leaning towards awareness of digital missionaries.

Like we look at some of the stuff that's coming out of Lison, Billy Graham's missions organization. Some of the stuff that's coming out of Cru and GACX, of course, which is global. And like there's more awareness.

BGA, Billy Graham Evangelical Association, there's awareness of it, there's awareness of the need. But what I think what makes the Church Digital unique is that where some of these large organizations, like even Global Media Outreach, maybe one of the top ten largest missions organizations on the planet, they do missions work digitally, but they're not involving, you know, normal people. It's not challenging individuals to be missionaries. It's call centers and ads and it's a completely different process.

I don't, you know, Andy and I talk about this all the time. I don't know anybody that's doing what we're doing right now, trying to challenge normal people and teaching normies, normal people on how to be a digital missionary.

Yeah, that's what I love about your vision, Jeff. Um, I'll share with the audience that's watching either now live or in the post, you know, the play afterwards. Like, um, I remember sitting with you at Starbucks like Dadeland Mall here in Miami during COVID and you sharing with me your dream for this and um, all kinds of light bulbs were going on for me like just in my brain like just started turning going, "My gosh, like yes, like you have been doing this personally. You've been a digital missionary before that term was even brought together. You've been practically doing it since early 2000s. But then when you started seeing the opportunity to like formally put together an organization that would, and even on this side of COVID, this is part of what I love, is that you know because I do so much work with local churches I just see that every church building is filled with people that are digital missionaries and don't know it and pastors have an army of people that can, you know, like I remember as a kid, our church did a lot of evangelism training through Evangelism Explosion.

Yeah.

That was like the big popular evangelism training program, you know, and um a lot of those kind of evangelism programs have died away.

It's very difficult, and pastors tend to struggle with, like, how do they? So, so kind of the lowest common denominator, the bottom shelf, the easiest thing to kind of get your people to do in your church if you were pastor is print out some invite cards and get your people to just invite. You know, there's an invite culture, but even that has been somewhat difficult. And so I do believe there is a shift happening where we can encourage pastors and churches to see their people as digital missionaries because the reality is every person walking around with a cell phone in their pocket has the potential to be and the go, the gospel in their heart, and the cell phone in their pocket has the potential to be a digital missionary.

And I'll just say this last, you know, one more thing as I think about it is I remember in the fall of 2019 being on a missions trip to Cuba in Havana with some amazing leaders. We were training some pastors there. And as we were getting ready for dinner, I stepped outside into a way area, and there's this apartment building next to the church building, and I looked up and there was with an iPhone, and I was so like I was a little bit like confused, like how in the world does this teenager in one of the poorest cities in the world have an $1,000 iPhone? I struck up a conversation and I said, "What are you doing?" Like, you know, and I speak Spanish, so I'm in Spanish I'm asking this teenager like, "What are you doing?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm on social media. I'm on the internet basically." And I thought, "Wow." Like again, this was like the beginning of me starting to realize what the Lord was doing and what's happening in the world, that if we want to reach the world, yeah, it's going to be digitally. It's the technology has provided us the just a crazy opportunity to get the gospel out to a lot of people.

So yeah, love what you're doing. I'm grateful for organizations like the Church Digital. Yeah, man, it's amazing.

Jesse's been one of the conference sponsors that we've had and has led breakouts and has been a part of that. You know, just the conference tech stack alone, the platform that we run the conference on, costs about $4,000 a conference, and so it's been our desire with the Church Digital to do the digital missionary conferences for free. We've had, you know, 2,500 people register for those, and so this year 2,500, and so excited about that. Ninety, at least ninety some countries.

The last conference was a thousand people from 92 countries, and so like there's a huge interest, there's a huge need, but to be honest, you know, tech costs money, and things like a platform. It was funny, the first platform we did the conference on, we, the 1,500 people or 1,100 people day of broke the conference platform literally. It shut it down. And so to get a conference that can sustain us, a platform that can allow for the breakouts and the engagement costs money, and that's where we're looking for people like you, donors, to step in and find financially help the Church Digital to do that.

And so $4,000 is just an example of one of the many projects that we've got listed on the Church Digital that we're looking for funding on. We do have a donation, a grant, a matching grant open right now for today. $5,000 is open, so the first $5,000 you give, somebody will match that. Your $1 will equal $2 to the Church Digital. And so help us by donating right now today so we can secure this matching grant.

Let me encourage, if I could encourage just people that are listening. It can be overwhelming to hear that we're trying to raise $50,000 and you're looking at the lower third, $4,000 for tech stack for the conference platform. You know, that is a lot of money, and you may think like, "Well, I don't have a lot of money and I can't give that much to this missions and this to this organization," but maybe you can give five, five, ten, $20 a month on a consistent basis. And so I just want to encourage you to consider even if it's a small amount on a consistent monthly basis over the year, that would be a blessing to the Church Digital because a lot of how the Church Digital does its work is through the ongoing consistent giving of donors throughout the year. And you know, I've been in that place where you know you believe in something but you feel like you can't contribute, but even the smallest amount, so I would encourage you to visit the giving page, you know, and just set up a small giving, you know, recurring giving, you know, donation to this ministry because the dollar goes a long way. I've worked in large, you know, multi-million dollar organizations. Usually, the funds, you know, like almost 50% of the money's raised go to staff. And I will tell you that in this organization, as a board member, I will say proudly that that's not the case here. This is an army of volunteers. There are very few paid staff. You know, there's a lot of the money actually goes to real ministry. And so again, if you feel like you can't give big amounts, don't, you know, just pray about a small recurring donation that you can give throughout the year that would be a blessing to this ministry. So thank you for participating in any way that you can.

That's beautiful. Thank you, Jesse, for that. Yeah, budget-wise, very little financially goes to staff. And just as an example, $138 is the cost of streaming per minute. And so, you know, a $50 show for an hour or a stream or something like that. These are what we're looking for help with. The actual, it's just funny, looking over at the Church Digital overall, $381. $381 is the cost of keeping the Church Digital running every day for 24 hours.

Yeah, it's you know, every little bit goes towards something. And so, you know, a $25 donation, a $10 donation, a $50 donation. Actually, I had a friend of mine who's a college student, a college kid. He worked, he planted a church in Roblox, Daniel Heron. And it was funny last year as part of this Giving Tuesday stream, he started donating, I think ten bucks, fifteen bucks, and it was a college kid. He didn't have any money, man. And so, but that was what he put his money towards and so supporting the mission of the Church Digital. And so fifteen bucks monthly for him, man, that was a lot, and it means a lot whether it's a big donation or a small.

But Jesse, man, thanks for hanging out with us today and being part of the fun here on the stream. You can check out digitalmissionsproject.com, right?

Yeah, yeah. Can I pray before I go?

Man, I would love that.

Yeah, let's pray. Jesus, we just come to you now and submit ourselves to you and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. And we just, we're grateful that you invite us into this grand mission. It's your mission. This is not our mission. This is not our church. This is not our program or business or organization. Lord, this is all of it is yours. It is your kingdom. You are the king. You are the king of kings. And Lord, unless you go before us, unless you do it, we're sunk. And so Lord, I pray for Jeff's health. I pray that you would heal him. I pray that you would be with the doctors as they move forward into the bypass surgery. Lord, give him a renewed sense of vigor and energy. And Lord, the mission's not done. There's so much more to do, and we're believing for the finances necessary. Lord, you know what the Church Digital needs from the standpoint of money to pay for tech stacks and conferences and to live stream. Lord, you know exactly who needs the gospel throughout the world. You know what each of the leaders and the volunteers need. Lord, that's what's so amazing is that your grace and your mercy and your love for us. This is not a transaction. You do not expect us to perform, Lord Jesus, to earn your love. You give us your love freely in spite of our performance, in spite of our love. And that's what of all the religions and all the gods in the world, you are so attractive because of your grace and your mercy and your love. And so would you, just through the power of your Holy Spirit, would you bring what this ministry needs, Lord Jesus? Would you bring what Jeff and his wife Amy and his kids need, Lord Jesus? Would you protect them, Lord? I do believe this is a spiritual attack against Jeff and against Amy. Lord Jesus, I believe that this is the enemy trying to take him out so that this ministry would not happen. But Lord, you are stronger than that. You are more merciful and kind than that. And so we, Lord, we just believing that you're going to provide what's needed and necessary so that your kingdom can continue to grow and to expand. And so we ask all of these things, Jesus, who gave his life for us, that we might have life. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen. All right, Jesse, man, thank you very much for that prayer. Thank you for your friendship. Thanks for being on the board and appreciate everything you're doing, man.

All right, love you, man. Take care.

Jesse Carbo, Digital Missions Project, board member of the Church Digital. Excited. We'll have the chairman of the board, Charlie Barum, along later in the broadcast as well. You know what? That's, I wanted to do this quick talk, but it's buried. Give me one second. One, two. I just started mashing buttons. It's conference. All right. I would, Sparkler, Sparky here, Arno, I'd be interested in knowing the short history of the transition to digital missions from what it was eight years.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've got a whole slide presentation on that. I mean, back pre-COVID we were doing marketing and technology AVL, and then in COVID we were, before COVID we were digital church planting with Stadia, and then when COVID hit, then we were doing physical doing digital and church planting. And then we were helping physical churches understand how to do digital missions and digital discipleship through New Thing and Leadership Network. And really, I think the drive lately was to digital missions. I look at it instead of B2B, business to business, we're B to B to C, business to consumer. Instead of going through the churches to work with individuals and help churches understand. I'll be honest, I kind of gave up, and we started working straight with the individuals instead. That's not to knock the churches. The churches, a physical church is doing something beautiful. I'm literally on staff with several physical churches as well right now with what I'm doing. And I love the ministry that a physical church can do in the community. But the work that we're talking about here and the people that we're going to bring on are doing something different. And to me, that's the beauty is doing something different to reach someone different. And that's why I think that the Church Digital is so valuable right now and so viable because we are attempting to do something different that others are not doing. We're trying to multiply and mobilize missionaries out of normal people. And so I'm going to bring on my friend here, Simon. Hello, Simon.

Hey there. Greetings from Germany.

Hey, how are you doing, sir?

It's been a long day, but it's great to be here.

Now, are you wearing one of my shirts? Like I see the cross, but I don't recognize that shirt.

The elephant shirt.

Yes, of course. I'm yeah, I'm very sorry that I'm a little bit blacked out, but our studio just went underwater a couple of days ago, so there is not so much lighting available, so we have to cope with that.

No worries. Hey, I've got Julie on as well. Julie was joining you for this, right?

Yes.

Perfect. All right, let me bring Julie on. That's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure had that prepped. So, let me push the button. And here's Julie. Julie, can we hear you?

Hi, everyone. Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me, guys?

Yes, we can hear you.

That's awesome. We had some tech issues earlier.

Well, Julie, I'm glad you made this segment. Listen, Simon, I so Simon is our outpost leader in Europe. He works for a missions organization called Mission Alliance. And um Simon, why don't I just give it over to you? Talk a little bit about maybe how you got connected to the church digital and um I don't know whatever you want to say.

Yes, I'd love to do so. It's great to join here on the stream and it's great to see you um at least up in the chair again after some uh unwillingly break. Um yes uh how did I get connected to the church digital? I was actually um one of the conferences the church digital uh did formerly known as uh the digital church network and was one of the conferences taking place and for me it was quite fascinating to see that there are so many people around the world who are already thinking about doing digital ways of church doing digital ways of mission that was the first contact and um throughout the following I guess one or one and a half year we had different contacts um with uh you Jeff with um flat cap.

And what I loved was getting into the um Discord community was finding people who were not only doing um things comparable to what I was thinking about but which were willing to invest into me. Um I still remember one of the first talks they had was flat cap where he just said well Simon for what you are doing you just need um a Paul or a Timothy by your side and that was really good and a game changer and actually uh yesterday the first of December uh was the day when I got someone by my side Daniel Shunker who has also been as a speaker on the digital uh European missionary summit um is co-leading within alliance mission and I'm really really happy about that.

So getting in contact with the church digital has really shaped my way of thinking globally about mission and has opened the opportunity to get in contact with so so many people. That's just great. I love the EDMs. I love having spent the time in the Forsyth Congress in Seoul together with you Jeff and others and through the EDM started more and more people got connected people like Julie just by my side and I love that we're not only having a European equipping digital missionary uh cohorts um and also a German one but that Julie will be starting a French one beginning next year not alone but together with Cindy who has always already been on the stream and with a couple of others. So on to you.

Yeah. So excited about this. We're in the process right now of translating equipping uh the equipping digital missionary cohort as well as the sharing Jesus online book uh into into French and and you know and I recall the other day um you know just in WhatsApp there was a chat that popped up the sharing Jesus online book the evangelism principle it's built on bless uh begin with prayer uh listen you know Dave Dave Ferguson's eat together we do share shared experiences, serve, and then share your Jesus story.

It's an acronym. Uh well, you know, when you write a book, you think, oh, it's just going to be English. Acronyms are fine. And then all of a sudden, you're talking about your book getting translated into Spanish, French, um you know, Hindi, and it's like, how how are we going to do this in uh in um in in French?

And um God bless ChatGPT. That's all I'm going to say. It came up with some some good options uh moving forward. And so, uh, Julie, uh, and so Julie's going to be heading up. Julie actually was in my EDM class, the first EDM class we offered, uh, and and is is going to be teaching it in French.

Uh, and so, Julie, kind of like what's your mindset or what are you excited about, uh, heading into starting to help people, uh, become digital missionaries, uh, who speak French?

I'm back. I'm sorry. I was a bit frozen.

Okay. Um, are you guys there?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I just asked you I just asked literally asked you a question. Um, how are you? Talk to me a little bit about um teaching uh the class in French. Like what's going on in your mind?

Dang it, she's gone. Is Simon gone, too? Okay, they're frozen. I'm not frozen. It's weird to me that I thought I I thought I was the one that was frozen and they're not.

Let me clear I upgraded to fiber. Okay. Last year I had I had I had Comcast. I know Xfinity. Like if you're in America, you're like, "Why? Xfinity is horrible." And it's true. It is horrible. But um I switched over to I switched over to fiber. And you think, "Oh my gosh, fiber. You should be fine. Well, do I look fine now? It's so cold in here. I'm sneezing.

Um, yeah, Simon. All right, I'm going to hang up on these two, let them reconnect. Uh, and hope for the best. Man, I was so excited. Hopefully, I'm allergic to bad internet. Um, hopefully Simon and and Julie can make it back.

I'm so excited about what's happening um in that space. The I'm so excited about what's happening in in Europe right now. Europe is is the um most uh organized region that we have now. Now, what we did, we decided to launch what we're calling outposts. These are decentralized regions and and empowering volunteers in that space. Now, Simon knows Europe far better than I know Europe. I I know nothing about French. Julie knows French better than I do. And And so what we want to do is actually find people um who can lead out in those spaces. Find people who have a vision for what? For digital evangelism, digital discipleship. Find people who have a vision for relational evangelism digitally and empower them to to lead uh a peer-to-peer, a decentralized, a regional network in that space. Like that's the plan. That's the desire. That's that's the dream. And so, oh my gosh, we have a Troy Jones sighting. Hey, Troy. Troy, I haven't seen you in a month of Tuesdays, bro. Good to see you. Thanks for jumping on. We got to catch up at some point, bro. Okay. Um the beauty of um of like assignment, somebody who has has that vision. Um like we the church digital, we were literally gasoline on the flame for him, man. He wanted to do this stuff. He just needed some sort of structure and guidance and material and we provided that for him and he took off running with it and and did a did a phenomenal job. He was was it was funny. He was just looking at at Germany. Simon's German and so we started coaching him on on some of the other um Here's come Simon. I'll bring him back on. Hey, Simon. You back?

Hi. All right, let's try it again. But we started we started giving him access. We started giving Simon access to um you know, some not not only like the materials, but you know, Simon, I I've got people coming out to me all over the place from Europe, man. I I I don't and I don't know what to do with these people. Can I can I start to give them to to you? A summit. I was talking about how you were doing Cloud Church um but really expanded beyond that even to now looking at at all of Europe and starting to resource and connect into other countries and and now moving not just from German in into French and starting the thing with Julie and Cindy.

Like there's some really interesting things I think that are that are happening in in Europe. Um, what I mean what's kind of as I know we're we're neck deep in the French, but after that kind of what's what's next for you? Do you have a do you have a next do you have a dream, a vision or anything?

Yeah, definitely. What I um love is um seeing that um the church digital um offers the opportunity to connect those people scattered across Europe. Europe as um a continent with a variety of cultures and a lot of language groups um and having the ability to find a connecting point where digital missionaries can uh connect across this uh continent. That's really a great opportunity. So what I would love to see is to get um courses like EDM or like courses to develop further available in as many language groups for the European for the European continent as possible. That on the one hand side and on the other one other hand side offer the opportunity for many countries which are not as as vast as uh the US or Brazil um to also give the opportunities to have cohorts of um digital missionaries meeting others in their region. You know, if you have to drive five hours to meet a cohort of digital missionaries, that's probably something you're willing to take. And in the European context, that might be a good possibility. And um reaching much more language groups can be really great opportunity um through uh translation in AI doesn't work for smaller language groups in Europe, but it might be a great opportunity. And probably you'll join me next May for the European Leadership Forum, which is the opportunity to reach out at in one of the uh biggest um evangelical leaders events for Eastern Europe um where I'll be holding a talk on digital missions and we also have a booth with the church digital. So connecting the dots across Europe uh getting into different culture and language spots and finding places to connect people. Yep.

That's beautiful. I I keep forgetting about that conference in May. Uh send me an email if you message me on that. Let me make sure I get that on my calendar because we we were just scheduling the next uh digital missionary conference in May as well, and I don't want to overlap that.

Um Julie's just having bad internet. We're going to have to let move on, but uh French EDM should start on February, uh God's will. And so, uh we're excited, uh about that. And it is a desire to get into multiple languages. Um, you know, once again to contextualize for me that the the desire of the church digital is not to be a massive organization, but to be a decentralized a whole bunch of small organizations and the idea of having Simon with his network running underneath him and in Europe in uh in Africa and uh some different things in India like we want to contextualize uh this as much as possible and and all of that contextualization it does cost money uh and so we're looking at $4,000 uh to translate sharing Jesus online and into Hindi, Bengali. Uh but you can plop in whatever languages you want into that translation cost in that, design cost in that and also the course as well. Um before equipping digital missionaries uh would be included in that. Hey Simon, before I let you go, I'm going to go ahead because I don't get a chance to do this too often. Let's let's hit the button and bring on Jason Morris. How you doing man?

Doing great. Yeah, man. It's good seeing you guys.

Oh, yeah. I actually I can't think of the last time we had the three of us on a call together, but yeah. I mean, these the three of the three the two of them work very closely together and and I kind of like look at the outside way. The two of them are smart and I just kind of and the pretty face, but um Jason is our equipping and mobilization. Well, no, he's equipping director. He doesn't know he's also mobilization director. I haven't told him that publicly yet, but uh but for yeah, it's it's welcome to the new normal, baby.

But um the good news is that Jason has been working hard getting the course set up in French um and a lot of the translation and working on our LMS, our platform as well.

And so I don't know, Jason, did you want to talk anything about the French stuff? Well, I wanted to take a little bit of a step back and do you remember when we were talking last Giving Tuesday last year?

Mhm.

None of this international stuff was even a thing.